Compartmentalization
by saoulbete
Summary: She's always been good at compartmentalization. Tucking everything into neat little boxes. she's even gotten good at lying to herself.
1. Chapter 1

a/N - something about this fandom just draws out my inner desire to write. especially while intoxicated. i'm halfway through a handle since i started posting earlier this evening, and have managed to shit out like another 3 fics. enjoys.

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She compartmentalizes, she's good at it. She tucks each little part of her life away, burying anything that she doesn't want to feel. She's gotten good at burying emotions, she's gotten good at lying and pretending that everything is just fine. She's learned a long time ago, to construct a facade on a whim so that the outer her is whoever she wants it to be. She's been doing it for as long as she can remember. She's a good liar, especially to herself, and pretends that the bit she keeps hidden away do not exist, and everyone believes her.

For at least the last eighteen years when she first woke up in a sweat, having imagined what it was like to be between Jamie Coley's legs, wondering if the curtains matched the unnaturally cherry red hair, knowing that the other girl's attention to detail had been enough to have been a possibility, she's learned how to tuck certain parts of her life away. Ever since she'd been in school, and woke up dreaming about her classmates. Ever since she realized what she was, was everything that she wasn't expected to be.

She'd spent eighteen years, trying to tamp down the desire, the _want_ that panged inside her whenever she found herself looking at an incredibly gorgeous rack, or a perfect ass highlighted by tight pants. She'd spent most of the last two decades fighting it. Pretending that these feelings didn't exist. And now, now they'd all come back to her all at once, and with eighteen years worth of repression to back them up. But now, now she'd just woken up from a dream not just about another woman, but about _Maura._

This was wrong. This was everything that she wasn't. This was everything that she had hated about herself all come to light. Not just anyone. She wouldn't be freaking the fuck out right now and sitting up in bed with a jack and coke at three in the morning with the knowledge that the double whiskey is no where near enough to make her forget, and too much for her to do much than just drink it. There's something weird about it, sitting there in the middle of her bed, trying her best to pretend that what had just happened hadn't just happened. She had just woken up from the most pleasurable dream of her life, dreaming about her best friend.

If it was anyone else – if it was Walcott, the butch, yet completely feminine DA that ran the legal side of their cases with an iron fist, that would have been one thing. If it'd been someone famous, she'd have been fine with that. After all, there's something that she's always found attractive about Ellen, and she knows that the woman had become her fashion icon sometime long ago even though she tried to pretend it wasn't true. There was just something practical about pantsuits, and if she happened to DVR the show – under the entire pretense of liking the guest stars – so be it.

This is what she spent her whole life fighting. She was the tomboy. She was the one that wore wifebeaters overtop her bras, and boxers underneath her pants. She was the fearless cop who had grown up playing flag football and softball and pretending as though these feelings didn't exist, because she was not going to open herself up to be mocked. It was bad enough when her Ma's good italian cooking had turner her into Rolly Polly Rizzoli, she didn't need to add Rolly Polly Rizzoli the Lezzoli on top of that.

It wasn't that she didn't like men. She liked men just fine. She liked plenty of men just fine. Casey, Dean, multiple other interim fucks, just moderately attractive men who she ran into in bars when she had had entirely too much to drink, and when the mental filters were coming dangerously close to eroding, and there were far too many perfect skirts clinging to too many perfect asses and too many tight tee shirts and she was talking entirely to too many breasts. That was when she found herself going home with the first moderately attractive man that talked to her breasts to save her from speaking to someone elses.

It was never exactly what she wanted, but it worked. It took care of the need and the want just the same, and stopped her from making an utter fool of herself, and eroding everything that she had built up. She was not going to be a stereotype. She was going to be the strong, proud, powerful woman that she was supposed to be. She was going to be the athlete, the all star detective. She was going to prove herself. And she was not going to be a stereotype.

She was not going to fall for another woman. She was not going to fall for _Maura._ Stereotypes could be fucking damned. She was perfectly fine with being stereotype if it meant that she didn't fuck up the one meaningful relationship in her life. She would hula dance in the middle of a god damned pride parade if it meant not making what they had awkward. This was Maura. This was the one person who meant the world to her, she couldn't be thinking these sorts of thoughts. It'd be like falling for Frankie or Tommy. Something about it just felt _wrong, _and the worst thing was that the rest of it felt oh so _right. _This was Maura, the one person that understood her more than anyone else.

She wasn't going to risk that.

Which is why when she wakes up some five hours later, the faint taste of Jack Daniels still on her tongue, but none of its comfortable numbness, she groans, heading to work feeling like she was on eggshels. She can't help it. She sees Maura down in the morgue, dress wrapped tightly around an ass, bent over a dead body. She can't help but stare, watching and nimble fingers stitch up a corpse, and the only thing she can think of is what she had imagined those nimble fingers doing her her.

The talk. They bullshit about the case. They bullshit about her mother, and she's doing everything she can to not talk to the two most perfect breasts she's ever seen in her life. She'd seen them before, talked to them before, but before she'd always had the excuse of a few beers too many, and had always gone home with someone else. They do everything they're supposed to do, everything that has always been so routine. Maura asks if she wants to grab takeout, watch a movie. She agrees, knowing that she could never say no. She retreats back to her case, tempted to go out and kill someone her self just to give her and excuse to not go over, not spend the night on the couch, not spend all night replaying everything she'd imagined.

Maura, at her door. Maura, in her arms. Maura, in her bed. Maura on Maura's couch. Maura, in Maura's bed. Maura in the car. On one of the autopsy tables. On a desk, on a kitchen counter, on the fucking bar of the Robber for all to see. Her head buried in tan curls, ankles locked around her shoulder blades. She finds Frankie, asks him if he wants to go to the bar later .Texts Maura _change of plans. Robber? _ And gets an assent in response. She couldn't do this. She'd spent eighteen years fighting this, and she wasn't about to let all eighteen years go to waste.

The rest of the day passes slowly, as she spends her time very carefully recompartmentalizing her life, packing away the feelings that she keeps carefully hidden behind her facade. She spends the next five hours staring at cold case files, pretending as though everything is just fine, and convincing herself that it is so. That she's not going to go home and get drunk and watch episodes of _The Real L Word_ and tell herself it's just because she likes trash TV. Ethnographic research, as Maura had called reality TV once. She's not going to pretend that she's jealous, or that she can imagine herself fitting in.

Instead, she finds Frankie standing at her desk, nodding towards the door as they go to the Robber, and she orders a double jack and coke, and another, and she looks at Maura, talks to Maura's chest, pretending that she doesn't. She pointedly ignores Maura's questioning looks. She knows better. She knows that this is just a path to ruin, and she'd rather go without than to have and lose. Tennyson could go fuck himself, there was no way that _twas better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all_ could possibly right. Somewhere, she's pretty sure that if she somehow fucks things up with Maura, she'd break.

So she talks to Maura's breasts and and avoids Maura's glances, and finds some moderately attractive man after the fifth Jack and Coke. She pretends not to acknowledge the disappointed look in Maura's eyes as she lets herself get tugged out of the Robber, pretends not to notice the questioning, hopeful look that was there when she made her goodbyes to a rack that had to be sculpted by God himself, followed by a whisper of something to the most perfect mouth ever, that she could imagine latching onto and never letting go from.

She compartmentalizes, and rationalizes that if this has worked for her for the last eighteen years, it can keep working. The sex isn't what she wants, it isn't good, but it's something. She doesn't get off, but it alleviates the _need_ that she feels whenever she looks at Maura. It's not what she wants, but it's enough, and she wakes up well before him and slips away before she can even get his name. She's used to this routine, and she goes to bed, and finds that she sleeps a dreamless sleep for the next few weeks.

She knows that it's just waiting to restart. That a few weeks from now, this whole cycle is going to start over again, and she braces herself for it. But she's not going to be a fucking stereotype. She's not going to fuck up the one good thing she has. She knows that she can't run forever, but she can lie to herself and pretend that she can. So she compartmentalizes, and pretends as though everything is all right. She's always been a good liar, now is no different. Maybe, just maybe, she'll even believe herself.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N - this was intended to be a one shot, but then the idea of Maura in _that_ dress took hold, and it...sorta became a 3 shot instead.

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She's always been good at compartmentalizing, and its six weeks since _that_ fucking dream, and she's gotten so good at lying to herself that she's almost sure it never happened. She's done her best to return to normalcy, and she's gotten damn good at faking it until she makes it. No one ever knew anything was wrong to start with, so good had she gotten at building the walls. It was just who she was and how she thought. She'd gotten good at building a forcefield of sarcasm and dry wit, deflecting anything that she didn't want to deal with with a joke.

Until she goes down to the morgue, fully intending on actually getting the toxicology results of a questionably suspicious death. She was really hoping that the tox screen came back positive, making the header their victim took off a fifteen story building an accident, that she wouldn't have to solve a damned fall. She hated those. She liked shootings. Shootings left forensics, bullets, shell casings, guns, that she could track down. People shoved off of rooftops, there was never any evidence left behind, they were usually people who got into one heated argument, making the suspect pool everyone. They were the sorts of murders that made her want to tear out her hair in frustration.

And she walks in there, and Maura's wearing _that_ fucking dress, and she finds herself stopping in the doorway, mouth suddenly dry. All she can see are hips, and that ass, and the slightest hint of God's Own Rack, half hidden by the way she's bent over an autopsy table, reaching for something on the other side. She's not sure how long she's there, just staring, but suddenly the air seems too thick to breathe, and she's fairly sure her pants just shrunk because suddenly there is entirely too much and entirely not enough friction where she wants there to be.

And then Maura turns towards her, and the spell is broken until she realizes that that shade of pale green she's wearing made hazel eyes shine fucking_ gold._ There's a smirk on Maura's face, and the only thing that she can think of is how utterly fucked she is, because she knows that smirk. Instead, she ignores everything, asks for the toxicology report, and swears when it comes back clean. Jump. Push. Not fall. She's going to spend the next few weeks as utterly frustrated as she comes, trying to chase down leads that were almost impossible to find.

She backs away, doing her best to ignore the _look _Maura gives her, muttering something about the case as she turns for the elevator, stopping on the wrong floor, because she knows it contains the closest single bathroom, with no other stalls to get in the way, and makes sure the door is closed behind her before she sticks her hand down her pants. She barely needs to do anything before she's biting clean through her bottom lip, the coppery taste of blood being what snaps her back to reality.

Maura's decent enough to keep _that_ dress in the closet until she finally pieces together the events of the crime, finally closes the case, finally gets her man. But it reappears again, after that, and starts reappearing on a near weekly basis. She knows Maura's fucking with her, she knows Maura knows, and she knows Maura knows she knows. It's getting to the point where she's managed to lie to herself enough to be able to pretend it has no effect.

And then Maura wears it out to drinks at the Robber, and starts ordering everyone rounds of whiskey, and and she finds herself talking to a chest again. She does her best to pull away, and find the first moderately attractive man she can, but she finds Maura tugging on her hand, and she can't pull away. They find themselves in the alley behind the bar, and Maura's lips are on hers, and she can't help the downright primal growl as she turns them to pin Maura roughly to the wall, ravaging that absolutely perfect mouth.

It takes a moment for her brain to catch up to her body, but when it does, she's stricken. She can't do this. She was not going to be a goddamned stereotype. She was _not_ going to fuck things up with Maura. She pulls away, and her comment of _It's not you, it's me _ feels terribly lame, so damned fucking contrived, even to her as she runs. She doesn't stop running until she's back at her apartment, trying her best to compartmentalize all of this with every heaving breath. She takes careful care to stick the perfect taste of Maura's lips into a place where she knows she will always remember it, even if she tries to forget, before she brushes her teeth four times to rid her mouth of it.

She goes to work the next morning, and does her best to pretend everything is fine. She ignore Maura's questioning glances, dodges the questions that she knows Maura wants to ask, and pretends as though nothing is wrong. She's good at faking it til she makes it, good at lying to herself until even she believes it. Maura doesn't push, and she hates her for that. There's little questioning glances, flirty gestures that she knows are designed to provoke. But nowhere is the fight, the one that she knows will make her feel justified in running away. Nowhere is the confrontation, heated words and hatred and self-loathing making themselves known. Instead, there's just these little, provacative _things_ designed to break through her defences. And she stands her ground.

She has a track record of fucking things up. She's unloveable, and she knows that the only thing that would come of going down that road with Maura would be losing everything. She would rather have something – even if it's not everything she wants – than not have Maura in her life. Because Maura is the only good, truly good thing in it, and she's nothing but corruption. She wasn't going to ruin the perfect purity that was everything that Maura symbolised. And eventually, she's good enough at pretending that she doesn't care, doesn't notice those questioning, longing looks shot right back at her, doesn't fucking _love_ Maura that even Maura believes it.

They never speak of it, and she considers the irony of it for a moment as she solves the murder of some Oscar Wilde afficiando. The not talking about the love that dare not speak it's name. But she knows – she can _feel_ it somewhere deep in her heart the moment that Maura gives up on her. And she's glad, because they return to the casual banter, although there's something missing. And she hates it, but loves it, knowing that she still has something, that she hasn't fucked up badly enough to force Maura completely out of her life like she knew would happen.

She compartmentalizes, pretends that she doesn't notice that something indescribable has changed between them. She puts up the walls, and deflects any comments with dry wit and sarcasm. She pretends that everything is just fine, and wears the facade of someone who hasn't just had their heart ripped out and shoved down their throat when she realized that Maura _had_ actually given up on the idea of them. She lies to herself, and tells herself it's for the best. That she's protecting Maura. That Maura was just confused, never really wanted her. She compartmentalizes, tucks her emotions away in nice neat little boxes like so many shoeboxes under her bed. She lies, to her mother, to Korsak, to Frost, to Maura, that today's a _wonderful_ day. She lies to herself that this is what works best for all of them. And somehow, someway, she manages to believe it.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N yeah, it's not a "happy" ending. But this was never a happy fic. You want fluff, go read my other stuff, go read anything else in this fandom. Go read...anything else, really, cause this isn't happy. It's not...sad. But it's not happy.

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She compartmentalizes, hides, lies to herself and tucks unwanted emotions into neat little boxes where she doesn't have to think about them. She pretends she can't remember what it was like to feel Maura's lips on hers, lies to herself about the odd pang of _want_ she feels whenever she sees a beautiful dress clinging to a perfect dress, a slightly too-tight tee shirt clinging to God's Own Rack, pretends that everything is just fucking fine, because that's what she wants it to be. She wants everything to be just fucking fine, and she will lie to herself as many times as it takes to make it that way. Fake it til you make it has always been her motto, and there was no way that it was going to fail her now.

There was no way that she could be what Maura needed. She wasn't going to be the stereotypical lesbian cop, and she sure as _hell_ wasn't going to be the stereotypical lesbian cop who got all lovely and schmoopy and sickeningly sweet around a girlfriend. She tucks those feelings away, hides, lies to herself that there's no way anyone would ever accept her, and she does want a good Italian man to settle down with. She tries to forget about the time when she was twenty, and her mother, after watching the media shitshow that surrounded the Ellen DeGeneris Show commenting that people should be allowed to live how they wanted to live and love who they wanted to love. She tries to ignore the subtle comments her brothers made about being all right with the way that she found herself talking to breasts instead of faces.

She pretends that she'd lose everything else in her life, despite all the damning evidence to the contrary. She tells herself that the evidence is just even more of a reason not to acknowledge those feelings. When even her family expected it of her, she knew everyone else did. When even her steadfast _husband, babies, and more babies_ mother made comments about supporting gay marriage, and giving her a pointed look as it was said, she knew that she would do anything to counter the stereotype that everyone seemed to think that she belonged to.

She was not some stereotype. She was not some fool. She was smart enough to know enough to know that there was no way that she was going to put Maura through the sort of hell that she'd found herself faced with every damn day. The mocking comments. The derisive machismo that seemed to come from men who thought they knew her better than she knew herself. She's smart enough to know enough that there was no way that she was going to put Maura through the sort of hell that was _her._

She tucks away her feelings, and lies, and puts on the facade. She compartmentalizes, and hides away the little bits of herself, and acts as though there's nothing wrong. Eventually Maura gets the hint. She'd always loved that intelligence. Maura, eventually, is smart enough to realise a hopeless cause for what it was, and be smart enough to move on. And even though she can _feel _it the moment Maura finally gives up – and it's a moment that makes her turn, run to the bathroom and vomit until there's not even bitter bile left to come up – she knows it's for the best.

And Maura, the genius that she is, eventually gives up. Finds someone else. There's a distance between them, a chasm that she yearns to close, but she knows that if she tries, it's just going to be a plaster over a gaping wound. It's not going to be enough. It's never going to be enough. Stucco to patch a hole in a concrete floor. Eventually, she knows, that the chasm would open up wider and swallow her whole.

_That_ dress disappears from Maura's wardrobe, and it hurts her to see the look in Maura's eyes when they drink these days. It's the same look her mother gave her the day she said she'd rather go to the academy, become a cop, than go off to college somewhere. Disappointment about what could have been, about what had been dreamed about. She listens to Maura tell her about the guy that's she's seeing and pretends to be happy for her, lies and acts like she's genuinely happy that Maura found someone that loves her for who she is.

She does the dutiful thing, standing there in a pretty blue dress, and signs the register like a good maid of honor should, and pretends to like Jimmy and not want to tear him limb from limb. She finds a nice Italian boy, and when she finds herself muttering two words that she doesn't really _mean_ but that are good enough, the whole precinct is there to watch it, because they can't believe it if they don't see it with their own two eyes. She gets drunk at the reception and requests Stephen Stills and tries to pretend that she's not talking to breasts instead of faces. It's not what she wants, and it's not enough, but it's something, and it fills a void in her life, like a round peg in a square hole. There's something missing, and she knows it, but it's enough to hold things in place.

And they settle into something. It's not enough, and it's not what she wants, but they fall into _JaneandTonyandJimmyandMaura _and she pretends to be content with the fearless foursome they've founded, as they go out for double dates, and she pretends that this is what she wants from life. She pretends that after her fifth Jack and Coke when they go out to celebrate Jimmy's birthday she doesn't spend the rest of the night talking to God's Own Rack, and pretends that she doesn't remember what Maura's lips tasted like so many moons ago every time she kisses Tony.

She's gotten good at compartmentalizing, lying to herself, and tucking away unwanted emotions into nice little boxes. This isn't what she's wanted, this isn't quite what she needs, but it's enough. She's lied to herself for so long, that she believes that she can be happy growing old with a man that she doesn't really love, but who is perfect for her. She's always been good at putting up the front, and somehow, somewhere, even she can believe she's happy.


End file.
